Government pouring millions into Turing-inspired big data research institute

New cloud institute named after Alan Turing

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The UK government is investing £42 million for a new 'Alan Turing Institute' for research into data science.

According to the Huffington Post, Chancellor George Osborne announced the move in his 2014 budget and said that research into so-called 'Big Data' would boost tech and health industries, and provide new avenues for growth.

Details on what exactly the institute will do, and how it will be run are yet to be revealed. A treasury spokesman said that a tender to house the institute will be produced this year. It may be a brand-new facility or use existing space in a university.

Its chief will report to the science minister, David Willetts and the intention is for the work to benefit British companies to have an advantage in big data and cloud research.

Turing

Another side to the story is that it is going under the name of Alan Turing who was a hugely influential logician and computer scientist, whose work was crucial to breaking German ciphers during World War 2.

After the war in 1952 Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality, and avoided prison only by accepting treatment with female hormones. He is widely believed to have killed himself after he lost his government security clearance.

However there were moves to clear his name and he was granted an official pardon in December 2013, following an earlier apology made by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009.

The fact that he now has a government backed insititute named after him, indicates that the Government has finally moved to embrace Turing as an important figure in British and Computing history.